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en:sic1-the-indignados-movement-in-greece [2011/12/01 22:15]
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en:sic1-the-indignados-movement-in-greece [2012/01/07 14:00]
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 ====== The ‘indignados’ movement in Greece ====== ====== The ‘indignados’ movement in Greece ======
  
 ===== What is at stake? ===== ===== What is at stake? =====
  
-Over the last few months, the immediate concern for the European Union and the Greek state has been to finalise the terms for the additional financing – 12 billion euros – required to service the Greek state’s debt repayments. The Medium Term Economic Program (the updated version of the ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ with the EU–IMF–ECB ‘Troika’) was finally voted for on June 29. Further funding of about 30 billion euros will be required next year, and even more in 2013. The Greek state missed budget targets set last year when the imf and Eurozone provided a 110 billion euro loan package, to be delivered in tranches. The centrepiece of the new bailout package is a privatisation drive that is predicted to raise 50 billion euros by 2015. State-owned power and water companies, ports, banks, the former telecommunications monopoly (OTE), the train operator, and other companies such as opap, the largest European lottery and sports betting firm, will be included in the sell-off, which means an even greater reduction in the indirect wage and the deterioration of living conditions in general, as well as a permanent and substantial loss of revenue for the State budget, ‘necessitating’ an even bigger deterioration in living standards and so on. In addition, there will be further spending cuts – more than 6 billion euros within twelve months, equivalent to 2.8 percent of Greek GDP – and regressive tax hikes targeting the reproduction of the domestic working class. This will mean wage cuts up to 30%. The trade-union confederation of public sector workers – ADEDY – estimated that the average overall cut initiated by last year’s package of measures would reach 40–45% of public sector workers’ salaries by the end of the present year.+Over the last few months, the immediate concern for the European Union and the Greek state has been to finalise the terms for the additional financing – 12 billion euros – required to service the Greek state’s debt repayments. The Medium Term Economic Program (the updated version of the ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ with the EU–IMF–ECB ‘Troika’) was finally voted for on June 29. Further funding of about 30 billion euros will be required next year, and even more in 2013. The Greek state missed budget targets set last year when the imf and Eurozone provided a 110 billion euro loan package, to be delivered in tranches. The centrepiece of the new bailout package is a privatisation drive that is predicted to raise 50 billion euros by 2015. State-owned power and water companies, ports, banks, the former telecommunications monopoly (OTE), the train operator, and other companies such as OPAP, the largest European lottery and sports betting firm, will be included in the sell-off, which means an even greater reduction in the indirect wage and the deterioration of living conditions in general, as well as a permanent and substantial loss of revenue for the State budget, ‘necessitating’ an even bigger deterioration in living standards and so on. In addition, there will be further spending cuts – more than 6 billion euros within twelve months, equivalent to 2.8 percent of Greek GDP – and regressive tax hikes targeting the reproduction of the domestic working class. This will mean wage cuts up to 30%. The trade-union confederation of public sector workers – ADEDY – estimated that the average overall cut initiated by last year’s package of measures would reach 40–45% of public sector workers’ salaries by the end of the present year.
  
 This is the continuation of a //horizontal// attack against the wage – the level of the reproduction of the working class – which started in 2009. It also encompasses various petit-bourgeois and wage earning middle strata, in particular through tax hikes and the opening up of protected professions, measures which tendentially change the structure of Greek society (namely, its overgrown petit-bourgeois sector). The state subsidies for the survival of the surplus workforce tend to disappear and the result is the proliferation of informal labour and poverty. Proletarians (and rapidly proletarianised middle and petit-bourgeois strata) have no other option but to work, mostly informally, in order to survive, and at the same time find it impossible to find a job or gain an income that would cover the cost of reproduction of their labour power. The official unemployment rate in March 2011 was 16.2% compared to 11.6% in March 2010 and 15.9% in February 2011, while it was 42.5% for 15–24 year-olds and 22.6% for 25–34 year-olds. Capital declares that it cannot afford the survival of the proletariat and makes it clear that a significant part of the latter is useless (in terms of the valorisation of capital), and more importantly, that the desired recovery does not include any re-integration into production of this over-abundant part of the proletariat. This is the continuation of a //horizontal// attack against the wage – the level of the reproduction of the working class – which started in 2009. It also encompasses various petit-bourgeois and wage earning middle strata, in particular through tax hikes and the opening up of protected professions, measures which tendentially change the structure of Greek society (namely, its overgrown petit-bourgeois sector). The state subsidies for the survival of the surplus workforce tend to disappear and the result is the proliferation of informal labour and poverty. Proletarians (and rapidly proletarianised middle and petit-bourgeois strata) have no other option but to work, mostly informally, in order to survive, and at the same time find it impossible to find a job or gain an income that would cover the cost of reproduction of their labour power. The official unemployment rate in March 2011 was 16.2% compared to 11.6% in March 2010 and 15.9% in February 2011, while it was 42.5% for 15–24 year-olds and 22.6% for 25–34 year-olds. Capital declares that it cannot afford the survival of the proletariat and makes it clear that a significant part of the latter is useless (in terms of the valorisation of capital), and more importantly, that the desired recovery does not include any re-integration into production of this over-abundant part of the proletariat.
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 >We say that the debt is not ours. >We say that the debt is not ours.
 > >
->DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOW !+>DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOW!
 > >
->EQUALITY – JUSTICE – DIGNITY !+>EQUALITY – JUSTICE – DIGNITY!
 > >
 >The only defeated struggle is the one that was never fought!((Resolution by the Popular Assembly of Syntagma square, 28 May 2011.)) >The only defeated struggle is the one that was never fought!((Resolution by the Popular Assembly of Syntagma square, 28 May 2011.))